Albert Peter Low (1861-1942)

Geologist Biography

Albert Peter Low was born in Montreal in 1861 and graduated from McGill University in 1882. He was a gifted athlete, and while at McGill he played for the first organized ice hockey club in the world.

In 1883, he played goaltender for the victorious McGill Hockey Club in the 1883 Montreal Winter Carnival, considered to be the first Canadian championship. After graduation, he joined the Geological Survey of Canada, rising to become its Director for a short while before retiring due to ill health in 1913.

He died in relative obscurity in 1942, but is one Canada’s most illustrious explorers. His first years with the survey are a story of epic canoe, sled and boat trips in Labrador, Quebec and Nunavut, during which he mapped and described, what was then, one of the largest unexplored parts of the world.

In the course of field work over some 23 years he was sometimes away from home for over a year, covering enormous distances under arduous conditions.

Between 1881 and 1899 he spent more than 2500 days in the field, mapping and reporting on more than 200,000 square kilometers. In the 1893–1894 season alone, he traveled over 8700 km; 4730 km by canoe, 1600 km by ship, 800 km by dog team and 1600 km on foot.

In 1884, on a survey trip to Lake Mistassini, Low disagreed with the slow pace of activities under the leader John Bignell, and undertook a solo snowshoe trip to Ottawa of almost 500 km in temperatures of -40o C and then returned after being appointed leader to replace Bignell.

Low’s contribution to geology was primarily as a superlative field geologist and mapper. His maps and descriptions of his surveys are of exceptional quality and are still regarded as models of their kind.

He was the first person to identify the iron ore deposits of Labrador, one of the largest of its type in the world and still actively mined.

He also recognized that the Labrador plateau was part of the ancient Canadian Shield and the locus of the Laurentian Ice Sheet that covered much of North America between about 95,000 and 20,000 years ago during the Pleistocene glaciation. He deduced this from a systematic study of glacial striae, the scratches left in bedrock by stones entrained at the base of the ice that indicate the direction of movement of glaciers.

In addition to his geological work, he also compiled extensive information on the geography of the areas he surveyed, on plants and animals, and on the inhabitants. As a pioneer photographer he took some of the first photographs of the native peoples of Canada, in particular of the Inuit.

In 1903–1904, he commanded the survey vessel, the Neptune, sailing into the Arctic Islands, during which he formally claimed Ellesmere, Beechey and Somerset islands for Canada. It was on this cruise that he touched on Bylot Island, the subject of the painting by Lawren Harris.

Photo: Officers of the Neptune, Albert Low is in the middle.

Albert Low faded into obscurity for many years, but his part in Canadian history has more recently been recognized. The 2004 book, Paddling the Boreal Forest by Max Finkelstein and James Stone, provides an account of Low’s life and of a retracing of one of his survey trips.